The inclusion of the Occupy movements across the United States in the same article as the bloody overthrow of Gaddafi? Seems a bit much.

That’s certainly a bit arrogant on Time’s part, but what bugs me more is awarding something titled “Person of the Year”1 to something that is decidedly not a person.

This of course is not unprecedented for Time. The first instance of this was in 1950 when “The American fighting man” was awarded the Person of the Year title — specifically honoring troops in the Korean War.

In total (including this year) Time has awarded the “Person of the Year” title to 13 things that are not a singular person as the title of the award would have you believe.

More interestingly the spread of these non-person awards is pretty wide between 1950 and 1993 — only occurring 9 times in that 43 year span. Since 2002 Time has honored a non-person 4 times with the award, in only a span of 9 years. Back to back in 2002 and 2003 even.

I don’t particularly care about the award and who gets it, but I do think that Time has a history of fucking up the award. All the proof you need is the 1938 award to Adolf Hitler. I don’t care what the context was. Because it was followed in 1939 by Stalin. If you still want to argue President George W. Bush was awarded it twice.

Most importantly shouldn’t this award be awarded to something that fits the title — you know — an actual person?

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tl;dr

Time magazine is not what it used to be. This is only further proven by today’s announcement that the “Person of the Year” award was going to: The Protester. Could Time being any less decisive? Not to squash the importance of the protesting that is happening around the world, but even with all these important […]